


After The End

by naeblis



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-04-18 16:11:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4712255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naeblis/pseuds/naeblis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ingrid is utterly baffled. Is she dead? If so, is this the afterlife? And is it supposed to be heaven or hell? Surely hell doesn’t have angels this beautiful, but shouldn’t heaven have a better understanding of things like plumbing?</p>
<p>This is my take on the “falling into Middle Earth” trope. I wanted to write this trope where the heroine is a grown woman instead of a teenage girl. This is not a self—insert, even though you might think it from the specific character background!</p>
<p>This is an AU Earth — Tolkien never existed and nobody knows about LotR. Rated M for swearing (plenty of it in the beginning) and potential sex scenes later on. Haldir/OC!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End

Ingrid Jensen squeezed her way through the crowded lobby of the emergency department. It was the end of yet another long, gruelling shift that had seen her treating dozens of patients. She was tired — “ _no,_ ” she corrected herself mentally, “ _I'm exhausted, bone—weary, and probably a lot of other things besides._ ”

Wrapping her coat tightly shut, she pushed her way out the doors and into a downcast downtown Chicago. The skies were pouring buckets. “ Appropriate,”  she thought wryly. As a Norwegian, Ingrid was used to atrocious weather, and right now she felt grimly satisfied that everyone else would be having just as bad a day as she was. A twelve hour shift in the busiest emergency room in the city on the busiest day of the year would make anybody a little bitter, or at least that is what she told her conscience. 

The heavy rain coated her glasses, making it difficult for her to see. Not that it mattered, she felt, she’d taken this route home many times before. 

That’s why it came as such a surprise to her when, crossing the road, she found herself suddenly thrown into the sky. She had time to think one last thought — “ _I really should start using crosswalks_.”  — before everything ended.

* * *

 

Ingrid drifted. In what, she wasn't sure. She was surrounded by a black sky that was notable for being completely starless. She realised dimly that she should probably be feeling afraid, but for some reason the concept of “fear” seemed nebulous. In fact, the idea of feeling anything in particular seemed foreign and somehow ridiculous.

She drifted.

After some hours, or maybe weeks, or maybe aeons — “time” was another thing that was hard to grasp — someone spoke.

“HOW ARE YOU FEELING?” 

Come to think of it, she wasn't sure that the speaker was a  person , as such, and she wasn't even sure that he — or  it  — had actually spoken. It felt as though the words, or the message, arrived in her thoughts without her ears being involved in the process.

“Am I going mad?” she wondered aloud. 

“I COULDN'T TELL YOU.”

“Who are you?” 

“I CAN’T TELL YOU THAT EITHER. HOW ARE YOU FEELING?”

Ingrid reflected over this. Theoretically, engaging in small—talk with a disembodied voice should have set alarms ringing in her head, but given the circumstances, including the vast abyss that surrounded her, she decided that it was best to go with the flow.

“GOOD IDEA.” 

“You can read my thoughts?” 

“YES. I'M SURE YOU HAVE MANY QUESTIONS. UNFORTUNATELY, I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY TO ANSWER THEM. LET’S HURRY IT ALONG, PLEASE.”

“Well, I'm feeling fine, if you must know. Where am I?”

“YOU COULDN'T POSSIBLY COMPREHEND EVEN THE MOST SIMPLIFIED EXPLANATION OF THIS PLACE. YOU MAY THINK OF IT AS A WAITING ROOM.”

“It looks pretty empty, for a waiting room.”

“THERE ARE OTHERS HERE. YOU CANNOT PERCEIVE THEM.”

“I see —”

“NO, YOU DON’T.”

Ingrid shrugged. “If you say so. I think I was hit by a car back there. Am I right in saying that I’m dead?”

“YOU ARE.” 

Ingrid took this with equanimity. 

“That’s interesting. What is this waiting room for? Waiting for what?” 

“ALL LIVING THINGS COME HERE, AT THEIR END. THEY WAIT FOR US TO DECIDE THEIR FUTURE. FOR MOST, THE DECISION IS SIMPLE. THEY HAVE COMPLETED THE STORY WRITTEN FOR THEM. WE GIVE THEM A NEW STORY AND SEND THEM TO A NEW WORLD, WHERE THEY ARE BORN ANEW. BUT SOME PEOPLE MEET THEIR END BEFORE THEY COMPLETE THEIR STORIES. PEOPLE LIKE YOU.”

“What happens to people like me?” 

“THEY GET A CHOICE. THEY MAY COMPLETE THE ADVENTURE THEY BEGAN OR RECEIVE A NEW ONE.” 

“So I can go back to my life?” 

“NO. IN THAT WORLD, YOU ARE DEAD. IT CANNOT BE UNDONE. WE HAVE FOUND YOU AN ALTERNATE HOME, WHERE YOU CAN CONTINUE THE LIFE YOU HAVE BEGUN AND SEE IT TO ITS COMPLETION. OR YOU MAY BEGIN A NEW LIFE. THE CHOICE IS YOURS.”

“What difference does it make if I start a new life or continue this one?”

“IF YOU CHOOSE TO BEGIN AGAIN, YOU WILL BE BORN IN ANOTHER WORLD, WITH NO MEMORIES OF YOUR PREVIOUS LIVES, BUT WITH THE SAME SOUL. IF YOU CHOOSE TO CONTINUE, YOU WILL BE YOURSELF AS YOU WERE WHEN YOU DIED, WITH ALL OF YOUR MEMORIES, SAVE THIS CONVERSATION.”

“Previous  lives ? I've lived before?”

The voice offered no answer. 

“Never mind then. So I get to be a baby again or be me in a new world? Won’t it be weird for me to live in some other universe? Aren't people going to find me strange?” 

“THAT IS FOR YOU TO RESOLVE.” 

“Right. And when I die in that world  —  I come back here?” 

“THAT IS NOT CERTAIN.”

“Well, what other possibilities are there?”

“THERE ARE ALWAYS INFINITE POSSIBILITIES.”

“Enlightening. Okay. I think I need to think about this.” 

The voice said nothing.

Ingrid drifted. 

Time passed, or maybe it didn't.

“Are you there?” 

“ALWAYS.”

“I've made my decision.”

“I KNOW.” 

“Wait a second, I just realised. What  is  ‘my story’ anyw—”

* * *

 

It was raining. 

The air tasted like dirt. Ingrid spat, and realised that her mouth was full of soil. She was lying flat, face down in wet mud. Gingerly, she stretched her limbs and was relieved to note that none of them seemed broken. “ _That car must have been driving slower than it felt_ ,”  she thought. And then, “ _Where is everybody? Surely someone saw me get hit?_ ”

She rolled over and opened her eyes. The sky spread out above her in all directions. 

“Wh a—? Where’s the city?” 

Ingrid sat up, ignoring the sharp sting of complaint from her back, and looked around. She was sitting in an open plain that stretched out for miles. Far away to her right rose a mountain chain.  To her left, she made out a hint of a distant forest boundary.  

“What the  fuck? _What the fuck_?”

She jumped up in panic and let out a sharp yelp of pain when she realised that her body was a lot more damaged than she’d first imagined. “Fuck fuck fuck.  _FAEN_! Oh god, am I in a coma?” 

This explanation was logical. 

“Yes. I’m in a coma. That must be it.” 

She plopped herself back down again in the mud. A coma meant that none of this was real. Therefore, there was no need to do anything. 

After a few minutes, she started shivering. “ _For a not—real place, it definitely feels very wet and cold_ , ” she reflected. She looked over at the forest in the distance. The shelter trees could provide was very inviting. But the forest was far away, and her body hurt.

She waited. 

After another five minutes, Ingrid gave in. She painstakingly pushed herself to her feet and started moving in the direction of the forest. Every part of her was in agony, but she was conscious that she was soon going to feel even worse if she kept sitting in the rain.

It was slow going. The plains were hillier than they first appeared. They rose up and down in lazy waves. The slopes were slippery and she lost her balance over and over. Her new mustard—yellow peabody coat was soon an unappealing shade of brown. She gained some solace in that fact that her shoes were comfortable walking shoes and not something impractical. “ _ At least I didn’t get run over on a night out _ _,_ ” she thought, although it didn't bring her much comfort.

Twilight was falling as she approached the edge of the woods, but it was still raining. She stopped and gazed at the trees apprehensively. Spending the night in a dark forest wasn’t a particularly beguiling prospect. “ _But a_ _t least I won’t be standing in the middle of a storm,_ ”  she thought, and resigned herself. 

The woods were thick and sprawling, but Ingrid ignored this, as she only meant to find some place near the border where she could wait out the night. She had absolutely no intention of going further than was necessary. She slowly eased herself onto the ground with her back resting against a tall tree, and let out a shrill scream as a man dropped from the sky in front of her. 

“What — fuck — _Jesus_ — what the fuck are you doing? You scared me to death! What — is that a bow?  _Helvete_!” 

Ingrid held up her hands and tried not to flinch at the sight of the arrow being pointed at her just a hair’s breadth from her face. She let out a yelp as two other men fell from the sky around her and immediately drew weapons of their own. 

“Is this the middle ages? What’s going on here?” 

The first man frowned at her and said something that Ingrid didn’t recognise. 

“Don’t you speak English?”

The man said something again, in a louder voice. 

“I don’t understand you. You can’t seriously be telling me that you don’t speak English,” she said flatly.

The man looked irritated. He gestured to one of the others, who stepped forward with a length of rope. 

“Whoa — what are you going to do with that?” 

He held out his arms with his wrists pressed together and gestured that she should do the same.

“You’re going to tie me up? No fucking way! No way! This is illegal! You’re not allowed to do this!” 

He looked back towards the first man, who seemed to be the leader. The leader gestured to the third man, who grabbed Ingrid's arms and forcibly held them together whilst the other tied her. This done, they put their weapons away and stepped back to observe her. Ingrid, at this point, was in total panic.

“I don’t know what this is all about, but I promise you, if you just let me go, I won’t tell anybody about this. I'm sorry for coming into your forest. I'm just tired and injured, that’s it!”

The men stared at her in confusion.

“Don’t you understand a fucking word I'm saying?  _Parlez—vous français_? No?  _Sprechen Sie Deutsch_?  _Snakker du norsk_?  Uhhh.  _Español_? Anything at all?” 

The leader spoke again, in a different tone of voice, but Ingrid just shrugged helplessly. He turned back to his companions and they began conferring. Ingrid could do nothing but sit there and watch them. They looked nothing like anyone she had ever seen before. They were all incredibly tall, and had long, braided hair that might have been in style centuries ago. Their clothes were made of a soft green cloth cut in a style that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in any fantasy book, and to top it all, they bore swords and bows. 

“You... you aren't by any chance LARPers?” she said timidly, although she already knew they weren't. 

They stopped talking to stare at her again. Ingrid said nothing more. The pain in her body was debilitating and she realised by now that it was futile to waste energy on trying to communicate. They seemed to have come to a decision anyway, because the leader came over and pulled her up by the shoulders. She let out an involuntary whimper from the pain. This seemed to give him pause because he stopped and stared intently at her face for a moment. Then he said something. Ingrid shrugged again, biting down the complaints from her body. The leader sighed in frustration. He pointed at her torso and made a sad face.

“Yes!” said Ingrid with relief, “It hurts, I am hurt. Do you understand?” She pointed at her abdomen and shook her head vigorously. 

The leader glanced back at the other two and gestured to one of them who immediately came over. This one seemed friendlier. He didn’t look at her with complete disdain, at least. He pointed at himself, and said very slowly and clearly, “Orophin. Or—o—phin. Orophin.” Then he pointed at her. 

“Ingrid. Ing—rid. I am Ingrid.” 

“Ingrid,” repeated Orophin. He removed his pack from his back and took out a flask, which he offered to Ingrid. 

“Is this water?”

Orophin indicated that she should drink.

“This is water, right?” repeated Ingrid hopefully. 

Orophin shrugged. Uncertainly, she lifted the flask to her lips and took a sip. It certainly wasn't water. It had an earthy, slightly bitter taste that reminded her of unsweetened iced tea. It made Ingrid realise that she was, in fact, extremely thirsty, and she drank the rest of it eagerly. 

“That wasn't too bad. Wow, I'm feeling tired. Really tired, in fact. Wait!“ —realisation dawned— “This is a sedati— “

She looked up into Orophin's smiling face and slumped to the ground.

 


	2. Waking up again

“Why did you drug her?”

Orophin shrugged. “She seemed weak. She will walk slowly. I wanted to get back to the talan quickly.”

“How does drugging her hasten things?” said Haldir.

“This way, we can carry her,” said Orophin cheerfully.

“I assume that you are volunteering,” said  Círdir.

Orophin’s face sagged. “Oh...”

“Yes, oh.” said Haldir curtly. He turned back to the trees, where the rest of their troop stood waiting. “The rest of you can continue the patrol. We will return to Caras Galadhon with the girl.”

The elves saluted and left. Círdir turned to Haldir with a raised eyebrow. “You are returning with her? Surely one injured woman — an unconscious one, even — cannot pose much of a threat. Let Orophin carry her back. I will go with him and see that he does not lose her.”

Haldir glanced at the strange woman that Orophin was currently hoisting over his shoulder. His gaze lingered.

“Look at her. Have you ever seen anything of the like? Her garb, her speech… in all my years I have never seen anything like it. She could be a spy, or a witch. Or simply just a madwoman. Either way, she is dangerous. I would not have any of our people left alone with her.”

Círdir nodded.

“I understand, friend. I cannot disagree with your conclusions. Would that she were not injured, so that we would not be obligated to take her in…”

It took several hours before they reached the nearest talan. The girl slept soundly during the entire trip. Bearing her up the tree was a difficult task, and it took some time for Orophin to climb the ladder with only one free hand. His companions were already waiting for him when he arrived on the high platform.

“What took you so long?” said his brother with a smug grin.

Orophin carefully lowered his burden into a pallet before replying.

“One of you might have thought to help me bear her up the ladder, at least.”

“This way was more amusing.”

Orophin rolled his eyes. “It seemed like she was trying to tell us she is injured. In light of this, the two of you might have been a little more compassionate.”

They at least had the grace to look guilty. Círdir jumped up and retrieved his pack. Of the three of them, he was the most skilled at healing.

“I will inspect her wounds,” he said smoothly. Orophin nodded and took a seat beside the small fire. No sooner had he opened the cork of his waterskin than he heard a sharp intake of breath from Círdir.

“I do not know what to make of this,” he said to the brothers. Curiosity piqued, the two of them rose to take a look for themselves.

Círdir had removed the girl’s clumsy, sodden coat and had drawn up the shirt she wore beneath. The right side of her abdomen was covered in a blanket of ugly black bruises that reached up over her ribcage. The skin had been broken in several places. In some, it had healed, creating a patchwork of irregular scars, and in others the wounds were still open and untended.

“What could have caused this?” said Orophin with wonder.

“Perhaps she fell,” said Haldir dubiously. “Or perhaps it was her husband. It is not uncommon amongst Men, or so I have heard.”

“It is strange that it is confined to one side of her body, in that case,” remarked Círdir. “I have a balm here that will improve things until we get to the city. Perhaps one of the scholars will be able to speak her strange tongue.”

“At the least, they cannot be any worse than Haldir,” replied Orophin.

Haldir rolled his eyes. “You might recall that only one member of this family speaks the Common Tongue at all.”

“I have not actually seen any proof of that —“

“Please, leave me and my patient in peace,” interrupted Círdir with a long-suffering sigh. “It will take me all evening to clean these wounds, and I would prefer to spend that time in silence.”

Abashed, the two of them returned to their seats by the fire. They sat in comfortable silence for hours, content to watch the flames in peace. There was no need to keep a watch, since this talan was deep within the borders of Lórien and was used solely for travelling to and from the Fences.

When Círdir had done all he could for the girl, he joined the brothers, who were still sitting by the embers of the fire.

“That is all I could do for now. I also changed her clothes. The… things she was wearing were too wet. I dressed her in some of my spare clothes. Hopefully it will not upset her overmuch.”

* * *

 Ingrid was lying snugly in a toasty warm bed. Somewhere close by, someone was singing in a soft, lilting voice that reminded her strangely of old forests and stories of magic.

She lay there in a lazy haze, both curious to find out which of her neighbors was singing, and at the same time too comfortable to risk leaving her bed just yet. After a while, she decided unhappily that it was time to get up. She reached out to grab her phone from her nightstand, but her hand grabbed at empty space.

Ingrid opened her eyes. Her heart sank. In front of her was not the wall of her bedroom, with its cracked paint and mysterious stains. No, in front of her was a forest.

She sighed.

A hand touched her shoulder and she turned to find someone staring at her, just inches from her face. He smiled and said her name.

_Oh, come on. This can’t be real._

She heard her name again and forced a smile to her face.

“Yes, I am Ingrid. And you... you’re Orophin, right?”

Orophin grinned in recognition and reached out to touch the edge of her shirt. She jumped back reflexively.

“What are you doing?”

She looked down at herself and saw with horror that she wasn’t wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing yesterday. Gone was the filthy woolen coat, the grimy jeans, even her T-shirt had disappeared, and had been replaced by a simple shirt and leggings, both in the same green cloth the others wore. They were evidently made for someone much taller than she was, since the leggings hung past her feet and the tunic resembled a dress.

_They undressed me?_ Now she was angry.

“What the fuck have you done with my clothes?” she demanded. Orophin looked perplexed.

“My clothes!” She grabbed the edge of her tunic in frustration and pointed at it. “Clothes! My T-shirt! My coat! Where are they?”

Realization dawned on Orophin’s face and he pointed behind her. She turned and saw a miserable heap of wet, dirty clothing sitting on the floor on the other side of the bed. For an instant she felt guilty, before remembering that these people had tied her up and drugged her, and now had apparently brought her to — she looked around — some sort of treehouse?

She felt someone touching her shirt again and rounded on Orophin. “What do you want? What are you doing?”

Orophin lifted his own shirt to reveal his abdomen — Ingrid avoided thinking about how perfectly toned it was — and then pointed at Ingrid and said her name.

“You want me to show you my injuries?”

Orophin repeated her name and pointed at her. Ingrid took the hint and raised her shirt. Apparently they’d also bandaged and dressed her wounds whilst she was sleeping. She was surprised at how clean everything looked. It looked much worse yesterday. Most of the bruises had faded away, or even disappeared, and — she touched her stomach gingerly — most of the pain had gone away. In fact, she thought in disbelief, she felt pretty fine.

“Some sort of numbing agent?” said Ingrid dubiously, even though she knew he wouldn’t understand. She felt skeptical about the quality of medicine these people would be able to provide, considering that they appeared to live in a forest and use weapons several centuries out of date. There was no way they had access to medicine that would make bruises like the ones she’d had yesterday disappear overnight. Her injuries must have been less severe than they felt.

Orophin was blissfully oblivious to her broodings. He handed her a waterskin and a small package wrapped in a leaf. She unwrapped it carefully and found that it contained a small white biscuit.

“Food?”

Orophin held up a biscuit of his own and, with a large, exaggerated gesture, took a bite out of it.

“This had better not be another sedative,” she muttered darkly. She didn’t really want to eat food given to her by strangers that had tied her up and drugged her, but she was famished, and these strangers didn’t seem to be completely evil. They had at least given her fresh clothes and treatment for her injuries.

_They are just suspicious of trespassers,_ she reflected. Which made sense, she would be too. If they wanted to kill her, they would have done so long ago.

This conclusion reached, she took a cautious nibble of the biscuit and chewed it thoughtfully. It tasted rather bland, but was otherwise inoffensive and she didn’t feel tired or sick afterwards. As she ate, she took the opportunity to observe her surroundings.

She had been sleeping in a low bed that was little more than a mattress on the floor. The floor was simply a platform built into a tree. How high up they were, she couldn’t see from her current position. She couldn’t see any sign of the other two either.

“Where are the others?” she asked Orophin. Orophin shrugged. She sighed and held up three fingers with one hand and pointed at him with the other.

“You — one,” she said, lowering one finger. “Two remain — where are they?”

Orophin looked upwards. She followed his gaze and saw with surprise that they were perched high up in the tree above them. This tree was huge, she thought in shock, even taller than the Californian Redwoods she’d seen whilst on vacation.

As if on cue, the other two dropped down lightly onto the platform. The leader viewed her with undisguised suspicion. The other one regarded her as one would look at a laboratory specimen.

Ingrid did her best to appear indifferent under the weight of their gazes. It was not easy. The three of them were stunningly beautiful. Almost too beautiful. Long, blonde hair, high cheekbones, tall — _and in great shape_ , she thought uncomfortably. It made her feel inadequate. They looked like they’d been clipped straight out of a magazine, at least if you ignored their strange clothes.

She pushed aside her feelings and rose from her bed. _These people helped me when I really needed it._ She couldn’t think of a way to show gratefulness — at least not any non-embarrassing ways — so she settled for a deep bow and a slow, loud, “Thank you.”

She couldn’t tell whether they understood the meaning or not. The leader, who she’d come to think of as “the sour one”, gave her a thin smile that wasn’t friendly at all. At a gesture from him, the other one stepped forward. He pointed at her and said her name and then at himself and said clearly, “Círdir.”

“Círdir,” repeated Ingrid blankly. Círdir nodded again and then pointed at the sour one.

“Haldir,” he said clearly. Haldir didn’t look at all interested to make her acquaintance. He was staring into the distance with a bored expression.

“Nice to meet you, Haldir,” said Ingrid. He didn’t even appear to hear her.

Círdir held up a pair of boots in front of her with a gesture that she took to mean that she should put them on. She slid them on and wondered at how comfortable they were. They felt as though they had been made specifically made for just her feet.

Orophin handed her a knapsack that contained the pathetic remnants of her clothing from the day before. She slung it over her shoulders and stood up.

“Alright,” she said brightly, “are we going somewhere?”

Círdir walked to the edge of the platform and pointed downwards. Ingrid followed his gaze with horror.

“Oh come on, we have to be at least fifty meters up! You can’t seriously expect me to climb down with tied arms. How the hell did you even get me up here?”

The man pointed again and Ingrid noticed that a ladder hung from the platform. It was made of a thin, silvery material that seemed far too flimsy to be safe.

“I do not believe that you actually intend I use that thing,” she said flatly. Círdir grinned at her and leaped from the platform. Ingrid gasped, but Círdir had grabbed the ladder in mid-flight and slid down it lithely.

Ingrid turned to find Haldir and Orophin watching her. Orophin gave her an encouraging nod, but Haldir remained impassive.

Ingrid knew that she couldn’t stay in this grown-up treehouse forever. Gingerly, she eased herself onto the ladder and began the painstaking process of descending. Círdir was waiting for her with a bored expression when she arrived on the ground. Seconds later, the other two landed beside her without a sound. Haldir looked irritated. He strode off into the forest immediately, and Ingrid was forced to move quickly to follow them as they followed a trail that she could not see. The three of them walked with purpose, as though they knew exactly where they were and where they were going, but to Ingrid it seemed as though they could just as easily have been walking in a circle. The forest went on for miles and miles with no discernible change in the scenery.

The trees were of a sort that was new to her, clad in a silvery bark and dressed with golden leaves, all growing close together with a  carpet of thick underbrush in the spaces between them. The air was thick with a perfumed, flowery smell that Ingrid didn't recognize. The entire place was unsettling. Ingrid considered herself well-traveled, but everything she had seen thus far had only superficial similarities with things she'd seen before. That fact alone set her on edge. Well, that, and just about every other aspect of the last twenty-four hours.

They walked for hours without seeming to make much progress. Occasionally they would stop and allow her to rest. They didn't seem to have much need of rest themselves; whilst she laid on the forest floor and tried to catch her breath, they would  climb the surrounding trees and talk with each other. That was in and of itself disturbing.

_Three bizarrely-handsome fully grown men who don't speak English are all dressed like LARPers out in the middle of nowhere, and on top of all that they climb trees like they were born into it? What the fuck?_

That thought span around in her head over and over again. She couldn't make sense of any of it. The theory that she was in a coma was dying with each and each minute. Everything felt so tangible, and Ingrid was pretty certain that her imagination wasn't capable of coming up with something as detailed and original as this.

She hoped fervently that wherever they were going, it would be a place that included some normal people that could speak English or some other language that she'd heard of.  She gave up on trying to communicate with her captors and spent the rest of the day in silence, taking water and food when it was offered to her, but otherwise ignoring them. Occasionally, one of them would raise his voice in song. Their voices were, as everything else about them, exceptionally beautiful, but Ingrid wasn't charmed. It was too disturbing.

The miles wore on and Ingrid struggled to keep the pace. The aches had returned since the morning, and she was exhausted, but she did her best to hide her weariness. As the sun fell away and the sky turned dark, they finally reached the top of a low hillock and stopped. Suddenly, in the trees below and ahead of them, Ingrid spotted the faintest hint of lights and movement.

"Is that where we're going?" she asked uselessly.

They seemed to guess what she was thinking, even if they didn't understand her words. Orophin and Círdir bore concerned expressions, and they were busy discussing something. By the looks of things, the sour one wasn't in agreement with them. He looked irritated.

He must have given in eventually, because Orophin came over to her and gave her his cloak. Then he pointed at the ground and put his hands to one side of his face as if to mime sleeping.

"Sleep?" said Ingrid, bewildered. "I don't want to sleep, if we're close to town we should go there."

Maybe getting to town would involve a bed, and if she was really lucky, a shower. Her captors didn't seem to follow her train of thought, however. Again, Orophin pointed at the ground and indicated that she should sleep.

_Sleep? On the ground, with no shelter whatsoever? No thanks._

"No." she said flatly. She pointed ahead of them, towards the lights she'd seen. "I want to go there. Let's go."

They looked surprised, but didn't argue with her. At once, Haldir set off down the hill, and she followed him, resolve overcoming her fatigue.

The town wasn't as near as she'd imagined. It was some hours later before they actually arrived at anything resembling a settlement. It didn't help that it wasn't visible until they arrived right at its gates, rounding a corner to suddenly light upon a road leading to a pair of large gates. Ingrid almost cried in relief when she saw them.

The gates were guarded by a pair of men that, like the others, were tall and blonde and on top of that, they were dressed in finely-wrought golden armor that gleamed. Ingrid took in this image with foreboding, and she saw in confusion that the road was decidedly not the kind that was used by cars.

_Where on Earth have they taken me?_

She followed them obediently, too tired to do anything else. They led her down a path amongst the trees, which were much thicker here, and she looked around in a confused haze.

"We're still in the forest. Where are the houses?"

They ignored her, but as she said this she caught one of them glancing upwards and she followed his gaze and stopped dead.

Each tree was enfolded in a spiral staircase that wrapped itself around the trunk and went all the way up to the top — at least a hundred meters into the sky. Delicate gossamer bridges hung between them, connecting the city like a densely woven spider web. High up among the treetops, she could make out glimpses of platforms, lit up by thousands of tiny lights that emitted a warm amber glow. It was intoxicating in its beauty and yet unfathomably alien.

It made Ingrid want to throw up.

  
  



End file.
